The Moon and the Stars || Heroes of Olympus

Chapter 24

Thalia stood and retrieved her arrow, but the point had snapped off. "That was my last one." She kicked the pile of clay resentfully. "Stupid ogre."

I closed my eyes and blocked out all the noise and action surrounding me as I concentrated on creating some arrows from silver. It took a little while but eventually I felt a weight in my hands and when I opened my eyes there were enough arrows to keep Thalia going for a little bit longer.

"This enough for you, Thalia?" I reached out and handed her my arrows.

She raised an eyebrow, impressed. "Thanks, Neo." She took the arrows from my hand. "My Hunters are holding a perimeter around the mansion, but we'll be overrun any moment."

"By Earthborn?" Jason asked.

"And wolves - Lycaon's minions."

I growled.

Thalia blew a flake of ice off her nose. "Also storm spirits - "

"But we gave them to Aeolus!" Piper protested.

"Who dropped us down a mountain," I reminded her. "Maybe he's helping Gaia again."

"I don't know," Thalia said. "But the monsters keep re-forming almost as fast as we can kill them. We took the Wolf House with no problem: surprised the guards and sent them straight to Tartarus. But then this freak snowstorm blew in. Wave after wave of monsters started attacking. Now we're surrounded. I don't know who or what is leading the assault, but I think they planned this. It was a trap to kill anyone who tried to rescue Hera."

"Where is she?" Jason asked.

"Inside," Thalia said. "We tried to free her, but we can't figure out how to break the cage. It's only a few minutes until the sun goes down. Hera thinks that's the moment Porphyrion will be reborn. Plus, most monsters are stronger at night. If we don't free Hera soon - "

She didn't need to finish the thought.

The four of us followed Thalia into the ruined mansion.

Jason stepped over the threshold and immediately collapsed

"Hey!" Leo caught him. "None of that, man. What's wrong?"

"This place .... " Jason shook his head. "Sorry .... It just rushing back to me."

"So you have been here," Piper said.

"We both have," Thalia said. Her expression was grim, like she was reliving someone's death. "This is where our mom took us when we were kids. She left Jason here, and told me he was dead. He just disappeared."

"She gave me to the wolves," Jason murmured. "At Hera's insistence. She gave me to Lupa."

"That part I didn't know." Thalia frowned. "Who is Lupa?"

"Wolf goddess," I waved her off. "Tell you 'bout it later."

An explosion shook the building. Just outside, a blue mushroom cloud billowed up, raining snowflakes and ice like a nuclear blast made of cold instead of heat.

"Maybe this isn't the time for questions," Leo suggested. "Show us the goddess."

Once inside, Jason seemed to get his bearings. The house was built in a giant U, and Jason led us between the two wings to outside courtyard with an empty reflecting pool. At the bottom of the pool, just as Jason had described from his dream, two spires of rocks and root tendrils had cracked through the fountain.

One of the spires was much bigger than the other - a solid dark mass about twenty feet high. To me it seemed like a giant stone body bag. Underneath the mass of fused tendrils I could make out the shape of a head, wide shoulders, a massive chest and arms, like it was stuck waist deep in the earth. No, not stuck - rising.